Sitting on the edge of the fountain in Lafayette Square, Aidan braced his elbows on his knees. He had calmed down to the point that he no longer saw red, and he was now able to do some soul-searching.
While he had never minded being the glue that held together his relationship with Kate, he wasn’t going to force Kate into a permanent tie she didn’t want. No relationship could make it if only one partner wanted it to work.
He had searched his heart and thought about his own motivation for staying in the marriage. It wasn’t just because it would be his second divorce. While he felt like a two-time failure, he kept coming back to the fact that he wanted to build a life with her. He wanted to have kids with her. He wanted Kate, Chloe and him to be a family together.
Kate loved Chloe. Chloe loved Kate. God knew his little girl deserved a mother. While he and his daughter had done fine on their own, Chloe was getting to the age where she needed a female role model. Even as important as that was, it wasn’t the tipping point that made him want to marry Kate.
They were good together.
He loved her.
Those were the reasons.
It was as plain and simple as that.
They fit. He was a better person with her. With her, he felt whole. As if every other relationship in his life—and there hadn’t been many—hadn’t worked because he was meant for Kate.
Kate was his soul mate.
He wished he made her feel the same way.
He would fight for them, but he would not try to force her to stay if she didn’t want to.
But he couldn’t help but hope that since it wasn’t as easy for her to run away from her feelings this time, maybe she would have time to think about it—about them—and realize how good they were together.
The next morning, when Kate woke up with another bout of the nausea that had been sidelining her since Vegas, she decided it was time to visit the doctor. It had been going on for ten days now, more than enough time for a virus to run its course.
She got the first available appointment that morning since her first client wasn’t coming until midmorning.
After peeing in a cup and allowing the nurse to draw blood, Kate sat on the exam table in a small room with cheerful yellow walls and framed paintings of colorful flowers. As she waited for the doctor to come in and offer the magic cure, she thought about how she had rarely been sick in her life. Except for the occasional cold, she was usually pretty healthy, which meant she wasn’t super vigilant about going in for yearly examinations. She was only twenty-six and she took good care of herself. She walked to work several times a week and tried to watch what she ate. She didn’t smoke, and except for the occasional social drink or celebratory toast, she stayed away from alcohol because of her father’s dicey history with it and, for the most part, she didn’t really like it. She would rather spend her calories on something sweet like chocolate or one of the masterpieces Jane created for the tearoom at the inn.
Had it been a mistake to forgo those regular checkups? What if there was something wrong that she could have prevented? Her heart thudded in her chest as a host of possibilities flooded her mind. She batted each one away with good, common sense reasoning such as her relatively clear family history. Her sisters, mother and grandmother were healthy.
But sometimes disaster struck. Having a clean family history didn’t automatically exempt a person from being the first to be stricken with a disease—especially someone like her, who had her hands in chemicals such as hair color and perm solution day in and day out.
A few seconds later, a knock sounded on the exam room door, interrupting the spiral of hypochondria.
“Hi, Kate.” Dr. Moore greeted Kate with a warm smile before she glanced at her chart. Olivia Moore was young and smart and had a great way with patients. On the rare occasion that Kate saw her, she never rushed Kate or made her feel bad for not making regular appointments. She made it clear that no question was a dumb question.
“Hi, Dr. Moore. Thanks for seeing me on such short notice. I have some kind of a bug that doesn’t seem to want to run its course and get out of my system. It has been like ten days now. Is there something going around? Although I’d bet I picked it up on a recent flight to Vegas.”
“How are you feeling?” Dr. Moore asked as she washed her hands at the sink in the corner of the exam room.
“I’m feeling frustrated. I’m tired all the time and I always have this vaguely nauseated feeling. Some days it is worse than others, but it always seems to be there.”
Dr. More picked up Kate’s chart.
“Do you know that you’re pregnant? The test we just did came back positive.”
The call from Kate came as he was dropping Chloe off at school. He was in the car line and hadn’t quite made it to the place where the safety patrols helped the kids get out of the car.
He pushed the button that connected the call to the audio system so that he could keep both hands on the wheel.
“Good morning, Kate. I’m in the car with Chloe. You’re on speaker.”
“Oh!” was all she said for a moment. “Good morning, Chloe.”
“Good morning, Kate,” Chloe said. “We’re having show-and-tell today. So I got to bring Princess Sweetie Pie with me. Say good morning to Kate, Sweetie Pie. She lets me call her Sweetie Pie instead of Princess Sweetie
